


Those aren’t war drums, boy, that’s just your heart beating.

by bellefire



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky-centric, Depression, Implied Relationships, M/M, Murder, PTSD, Violence, War, assassinations, but everybody’s got crap to carry, mention of suicide, time line is a bit wonky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 14:36:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6156793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellefire/pseuds/bellefire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three soldiers, lost, angry, and tired.  Three wars, time passes but war never changes.</p>
<p>Maybe that’s why it was always going to be Steve and Sam who found Bucky first.  Only soldiers could find another soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those aren’t war drums, boy, that’s just your heart beating.

**Author's Note:**

> : I can’t really say what I would call this. A short introspective into Steve, Sam, and Bucky maybe ,even though it’s still pretty Bucky-centric? A war story told through three not-quite war stories? It’s just been stuck in my head for a while. Unbeta’d. The poem used before the start of each section is called “For the Fallen” written by Robert Laurence Binyon.

 

 

 

 

Sam Wilson

_Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal_

_Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,_

_There is music in the midst of desolation_

_And a glory that shines upon our tears._

 

                You can’t carry it all with you.  Sam Learned that last, last like most things that stick.  Because the first thing you do after you get back into civilian life is try to do the opposite.  Try to take everything you’ve seen and done and hide behind a façade of normalcy.  That went to pieces the day after he met with Riley’s family; he’d wanted to be there when they got their flag.  The right thing to do under the circumstances, they said they didn’t blame him but the look in their eyes told him differently.  Riley had been his partner after all, they were supposed to have each other’s backs and war doesn’t give a family something to focus their grief on.  It’s easier to blame the guy who was supposed to take care of their son, _he’s_ the face of the war for them.  Sam thought he could shoulder that burden.

                He wakes up in a hotel the same night of the funeral choking on sand and smoke that isn’t there, hearing a scream he hadn’t heard because he knows there wasn’t one.  Just the concussion of air and then an explosion, Riley hadn’t had time to make a single sound.  When Riley fell he remembered the way his Grandma talked about angels, how they were protectors of humanity.  Angels weren’t supposed to fall.  Riley did.  They’d forgotten they were just human, up there in the air, saving people, flying free, it had been easy to forget.  Reality reminded him.

Reality smelled like cordite, felt like the burn of his own bile rising in his throat when Sam realizes he can’t catch his partner.  God, he had tried, but the RPGs drove him up into the sky toward the sun.  His legs are jelly when he lands at the extraction point.  The men they went there for made it out, according to the waiting medics.  At the time he couldn’t have cared less about the men he helped save.  Medics strapped an oxygen mask over his face and he just didn’t care about anything.  All he could see was the smoke trail from useless wings.  In that moment all the lives he saved that day, he saved ever, weren’t worth Riley’s.

 It should have been him.  Riley was too good.  It should have been him.

There was always going to be a part of Sam that believed that.  Even after he was the one making the speeches behind that podium at the VA.  Most days he could handle it, drowned the feeling out in routine and doing real good, helping the men and women who knew that feeling too.  It was never really enough. 

Months after Riley was put in the ground properly Sam tried to go back.  The top brass wouldn’t give him his wings back but they put him back in para-rescue.  He shoves Riley’s thrash metal bullshit music in his ears his first return mission and stands at the back of the plane while the others are going past him, jumping, falling though the sky and riding high on adrenaline.  He hesitates at the opening, the music is a screaming, he takes a breath and let’s himself fall too.  The mission isn’t vital, mostly just a pick-up for a few guys who managed to get mostly in a clear zone, Sam knows they’re coddling him to see if he still has what it takes.  He controls his descent easily, pulls the shoot, and lands without freaking the fuck out.

Everything goes smoothly and the whole time he can feel watchful eyes on him.  The rescue team makes sure the area is clear before calling the bird down. Sam secures the men and get them out of there with no muss no fuss.  The sun and abrasive wind feel exactly as he remembers it.  It’s all the same.  He isn’t.  It all feels wrong without his wings.  Sam officially leaves the military behind him the very next day, goes back to his place in D.C. and cries for the first time.  Nothing and everything cause the tears to sting his eyes, he’s just standing in his kitchen waiting for the coffee to get done when the pang in his chest grows so quickly and so painfully his hands shake.  Sam falls to the floor hard on his ass.  The coffee gets cold. 

Sam stops listening to Riley’s music.  Stops trying to make up for Riley’s absence in the world, he wasn’t honoring his partner’s memory living that way.  It’s just existing and hoping the universe will realize its mistake, or maybe God.  He hadn’t been keeping the Faith much anymore either, happens when you see angels fall.  You don’t get to bargain and no life in the end weighs more than another.  Sam starts calling his grandma again they talk religion, angels, God, and how to cook like a real human being and  Sam goes to the VA once a week, then twice a week.  He rebuilds his life, the dogtags around his neck don’t ever feel any less heavy but Sam can handle it. 

He keeps trying to remind himself of that.  He can handle it, he can shoulder the weight, he can take all-comers.  He’s alive and that makes it his responsibility.  Sam knows now there are no swapping places but he can make his best attempt at making his own life something to be proud of.

Sometimes memory burned too hot like an eternal summer in his head, sometimes he couldn’t be normal like the world wanted him to be.  He was a soldier, thing was you get back stateside people don’t want you to act like one anymore.  They expect you to be fine.  Fine.  Like the last years of your life should be tucked away forever, Sam had tried to do that for his family and friends who would never really understand how much it took out of him to just be “fine”.

Then he meets Steve Fucking Rogers, running circles around him without breaking a sweat looking like an Ambercrombie model.  It’s a surprise when Steve takes him up on his offer and starts coming to his work shyly listening to him address his current group of vets freshly back from being stationed in Kuwait.  And, yeah, Sam wasn’t just leading the group sessions he was still in with them too—was always probably going to be in it with them.  Next thing he knows Steve Fucking Rogers needs his help and it feels…something like a second chance.  He could put on those wings again, not for Riley but for himself.  Do some good in the world.  What he was meant to do.

It all seems like a damned good idea the more he learned what was going on.  Hydra being inside every major part of, hell, everything, was enough to have Sam reevaluating what he knew about his country.  Turned out what he knew wasn’t very much at all.  He knew what the right thing to do was at least.  He stood with Steve Rogers, later that meant standing with Captain America.  There was a difference between the two, one was a man, the other was a mantle.  Captain America was one hell of a leader but Sam would always prefer Steve.

Sam doesn’t last long against the Winter Soldier.  He went in knowing that one on one he was going to go down.  As impressive as Captain America was with his speeches and red, white, and blue uniform the Winter Soldier was equal parts terrifying.  Sam wasn’t going to lie to himself, he’d been scared.  He didn’t want to die.  Looking at the Winter Soldier felt like looking at Death himself come to drag him kicking into a quick and messy end.  The Winter Soldier rips his wing off and Sam’s falling, falling, falling, just like Riley fell—everything Steve had said about who the Winter Soldier used to be wasn’t much of a consolation.  He’s not dead but for one panicked second he thinks he will be.  Then his survival instincts kick in. 

Sam’s survival instincts sounds a lot like Riley telling him, “Use your shoot you fucking dumbass.”

The hard landing is a shock to his bones and Sam can’t help Cap on the helicarriers anymore.  He turns to the Triskelion at Hill’s behest.  He’s still scared, he’s going to keep fighting anyway.  Sam would always fight no matter the odds.  He had a lot of people to do right by, himself included.  To his surprise, they actually win.  The battle had been no dusty fire-fight in another man’s country hoping his team didn’t get taken out by a danger-close airstrike.  It had been big, public, with clear enemies and a clear victor.  He’s even more surprised the Winter Soldier saves Steve’s life.  Right after beating the ever-loving shit out of him, but still. 

Sam can’t bring himself to dampen that shaky hopefulness in Steve’s eyes.  He’d asked Steve what made him happy a while back, Steve had said he didn’t know.  Months of following Steve to one hovel after another, listening to stories of Bucky Barnes, Sam realized what it was that made Steve happy.  Who.  Sam could relate.  They’d both watched the men they loved most fall to their deaths.  Except Barnes’ hadn’t stuck and what he reads of the guy’s file makes Sam think maybe that wasn’t a kindness.  He never says that to Steve.

The trails goes cold faster than their combined resources can keep up with.  In the meantime Sam Wilson becomes the Falcon.  Officially.  He was an Avenger.  Tony Stark makes him some new wings and asks him about some personalized touches.  Riley’s favorite color was red.  Sam was one of those people who didn’t have a favorite color.  His go-to response when asked was nearly always, “Why does it matter?  I look good in everything.”  Sam tells Stark red and has to remind himself he wasn’t doing this because of Riley.  He ends up with a mix of red, white, and gun metal.  The wings feel like no one else’s but his.

As it would turn out, Sam searches for the Winter Soldier more than Steve himself does.  Sometimes that could be a blessing and a curse.  He can see how much Steve wants his friend back, though his fervor was finally waning after Ultron.  Of course he still wanted him in his life, safe and protected, but Steve was beginning to realize that wasn’t going to be so easy.  Too many players, too many people in power shouting blood for blood.  The Winter Soldier was at the head of it all.  It wasn’t right, Bucky Barnes was a prisoner of war, he should be allowed to come home. 

Wars were supposed to end, soldiers were supposed to _come home_.  Bucky Barnes deserved that much.  They all deserved that much.

Sometime between the Ukraine and Turkey Sam stopped trying to find Barnes because Steve wanted him to and instead realized he was searching because of Barnes and because of every Vet he looked in the eye and told they would be alright.  Sam had told them surviving wasn’t anything to be ashamed of, he told them sometimes the choice wasn’t in their hands.  There was no way he could look at the before and after photos of Barnes in his file and not think those same things.  He wanted there to be Hope for Bucky Barnes.  If a guy like that could emerge out the other side then there was hope for Sam too.  That one day, it would be okay and he’d stop having to say it every morning as a reminder.

Steve Rogers

_They went with songs to the battle, they were_

_young,_

_Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow._

_They were staunch to the end against odds_

_uncounted;_

_They fell with their faces to the foe._

               

                It was jarring going from the thick of it to “peace time”, they said the war was over.  “We won.”  Thanks to him.  Then they tossed him right back into the fight.  They said the war was over then why did it feel like it never ended?  No one asked him if he still wanted to fight anymore.  He had nothing left to fight _for_.  He thought that putting the plane in the ice made that point pretty clear.  Then again he had nothing left to lose either.  So why not?

                “We are not soldiers!”  Tony had hissed at him right before the Battle of New York, while Clouson’s blood was drying on a card with Steve’s face on it.  Captain America all smeared up with blood.  Fitting.  Tony wasn’t a soldier, he was right.  But Steve was, so Tony was also wrong.  Steve didn’t know what else to be anymore.  That’s all anyone wanted out of him anyway.  He was a soldier alone.  He was alone.

                When he joined the Army it wasn’t about being hell-bent on becoming a soldier.  He said he didn’t want to kill anyone, he still didn’t, he had, he would have to again.  All he ever wanted was to do the right thing.  The Nazis flew their swastika, created their death camps, and the right thing was pretty clear.  Then Hydra raised like a plague over the allied front, a true evil not just a bunch of kids marching to the Fuhrer’s drum.  Looking back, the few years groaning like decades reflected in grainy black white film, Steve was struck how young they all looked.  Not just him and the Howlies, but the other side too.  They were all kids in those trenches, just a bunch of kids who didn’t know a damned thing but who were called to give up everything.  The present wasn’t the only thing Steve had caught up on.

There was also Bucky.  Steve wanted to follow him, do for Buck what his friend had been doing their whole lives for Steve.  Have his back, keep him safe.  Steve had failed.  That failure caused a fissure inside him that never healed, he allowed no one else to touch his heart because he’d already given it to Bucky Barnes and Bucky was gone.  Peggy could sense that in him, she deserved so much better.  But she knew what he was feeling, felt it herself if the look on her face was any indication.  Peggy was just as much a soldier in this war as any of them.  Of course she would be the one to get him out of the rubble of that pub.

                “He must have damned well thought you were worth it.”  She says.  She means Bucky thought he was worth dying for, worth following, Steve hears do what needs to be done and fall apart later.  Make sure Bucky didn’t die for nothing.  Obliterate Hydra.

                When he gets back to the base he hears Dum Dum beat the shit out of two guys at the pub the Howlies went to when their Captain left them to their own devices.  They’d drank too much, they all had a hollow look to them but Dum Dum along with Jones, they were a little different than the others—even more protective than the rest.  They were deployed with Bucky.  They’d loved him.  Dum Dum doted and hassled Buck like a little brother.  The Howlies were with Bucky at the factory too, they never really talked about what happened there but it was obvious it bonded them.  Steve was taken into the fold easily, “Bucky’s Steve.”  He’d talked about him even amongst the despair of being a prisoner, Bucky had told them all about Steve Rogers.  Steve had done the same to Peggy and Howard, to the point that when Howard meets Bucky his first words to him are, “I’d say hello to you, sport, but I feel like I’ve known you too long already.”

That had startled a laugh out of Bucky an even though he was obviously interested in whatever Stark was cooking up he never hung around too long.  He’d never said why.  Bucky had always been smart, quietly.  After Azzano he’d only gotten quieter.  There were just some things Steve had never gotten around to asking, his curiosity seemed so trivial in the grand scheme of things.  Too little too late Steve realized nothing was ever trivial.

The Howlies made it a point to stick by him all the time before their last mission together.  Steve got the feeling it was only half for him, the other half was keeping on an eye on him like Bucky would have wanted.  They didn’t so much as say so but they weren’t as subtle as Bucky had been about being protective.  It was like a little piece of Bucky Barnes had been ingrained into all of them.  It _hurt_.  So he makes Hydra hurt. 

The he dies.

Steve thinks about everything he’d learned in Catholic school as he aims for the ice.  He wonders if this counts as suicide even though he saved cities.  Steve thinks of Bucky and knows without a doubt that it does.  He hopes God would be lenient with him.  He hopes his Mother was right about love being love no matter what and that the way he felt about Bucky was nothing to be ashamed of.  Hoped Heaven would let him in because he knows that’s where Bucky Barnes ended up in death, he was the best of them.  Of course that’s where Bucky would be.  Maybe waiting for Steve Rogers—always so slow,  Steve was.  Always trailing after Bucky’s graceful long-legged gait.

Bucky never slowed down for him, every now and then he’d pretend look around like he was making sure they were going to the right way as if he didn’t know New York like the back of his hand only to return to his normal pace after Steve was firmly beside him.  That’s what putting the plane into the ice felt like.  Like he was catching up to Bucky who was waiting just a little bit ahead.  In arms reach.  And just like that he woke, Bucky had slipped through his fingers.  Again.  Steve was deployed.  Again.

Working for S.H.I.E.L.D. felt a lot like working for the SSR during the Second World War.  He was always with a small skilled team in foreign countries trying not to get anyone killed or killed in return.  Except the men he worked with never really felt like his team, his orders never quite sat right, Fury liked to go on about how the world had changed and how Steve should get with the program.  Thing was, Steve Rogers had changed, the only ones looking at him like he lived in a bubble was S.H.I.E.L.D.  He’d been through war, lost the most important person in his life, hell, _everyone_ in his life and they still treated him like he was dancing around for the USO.

Sure.  Maybe he was angry.  Maybe he was definitely angry.  Filled with fury the moment he woke up in the future with nothing but a name someone else gave him and a reputation to live up to.  He felt like he was burning up inside.  Shit only got worse when people started asking him about the so-called “Golden Age of America”.  Golden Age?  Lynching, people getting beat to death in alleys because of their sexuality, diseases with no cure in sight, and a war that encompassed the world and these people called it the Golden Age, why, because they played fucking stick ball and kick the can?  Life had been no simpler or pure.  Maybe there had been a culture shock for Steve when he was introduced to modern society but it been a good thing, mostly.  People had gotten more tolerant though the government was as corrupt as always only now they had more substantial power than in his day.  Buying politicians and corruption wasn’t invented by Fury’s modern world, the processes just happened to be perfected by it.  The intricacies of the modern world didn’t even make the list of things that kept him up at night.

Nightmares, Sam had said, were normal.  Steve’s nightmares were always Bucky falling, or later after he’s read the Winter Soldier file what they did to him after the fall, most of the time they were simply dreams.  Steve would wake in the night to his plain and spacious, too big and too empty, apartment with more than half of his heart wishing to be back in the war.  Among the pine, and gun barrel smoke where he knew for certain what to do, the cold wind barely fazed him and Buck never seemed too much bothered by it either while the Howlies huddled and cursed.  He had felt immortal in the best way, had felt Bucky was immortal.  They were going to live through this, he’d been so certain.

Seventy years later Steve’s childish thoughts would turn to prophecy as he stood off against his best friend.  Steve felt like a relic, but Bucky for a moment looked like an angel come to finally get him.  He wasn’t, of course, he wasn’t.  Bucky had been hurt and twisted, used like a weapon Steve could barely comprehend how that felt but he knew some of it.  A little.  Steve was a weapon too.  He finally grasped that nearly a century later.  He wanted to tell Bucky that he understood, it wasn’t Bucky’s fault, this was war and they’d been used. 

If the rest of the world saw it differently.

Then the rest of the world could burn.

Steve was ready to fight for Bucky Barnes, same as Bucky always fought for him.  He could feel the shift in the people around him, government cogs turning, and friends asking pointed questions.  Steve sat quietly through all of it waiting for the thunder-clap of what would come next.  They were going to ask the world’s first super-soldier to stand down.  Soldiers serve, didn’t they?  Follow orders.  March till their feet bled and stay silent about their pain.  Never ask for anything in return.  Well, Steve wasn’t asking.  He was going to take, so maybe he wasn’t quite a soldier anymore.  He was just Steve Rogers protecting something for himself for once.  They were going to crucify him for one act of selfishness despite a long service history of anything but.

Let them fucking try.

 

 

 

Bucky Barnes

_They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow_

_old:_

_Age shall not weary them, nor years_

_condemn._

_At the going down of the sun and in the_

_morning_

_We will remember them._

 

                Saigon came back first, for no particular reason Bucky can think of.  It was the longest mission he remembered out of the ice.  One solid year out of cryo to insure Vietnam became a communist state.  It was no wonder he defected not long after, he was out exactly eight days.  Hydra had been trembling in their boots, or at least as much as they would admit to trembling from the intel Bucky scraped up from old Hydra bases.  The year had been 1975, then ever so slowly the pieces leading up to the city’s “fall” or “liberation” clicked into place like refilling the an ammo cartridge.  Years before Saigon he remembers the way John F. Kennedy’s scalp blew off.  As well as the look of incomprehension on Jackie Kennedy’s face right beside him and her sudden horror at the realization of what just happened.  He remembered coming out of cryo listening to Nixon’s inauguration speech over a year later because the other men in the bunker had the news on a little bubbly television box in black and white wavering in and out, Nixon was sworn in and the room echoed out, “Hail Hydra!”

                He’s still half frozen when a hot hand grips his shoulder, familiar, large, and a face lined with decades of battle smiles at him, “We’re going to set the cogs that will end the war, Soldier.”

                He doesn’t ask which war, there’s always a war and he’s either starting them or ending them.  Maybe it was the same one just put on a vicious cycle meant to cruelly churn men into meat feeding the next wave of soldiers.  On and on the machine churned, the Winter Soldier there to pour red oil on its components. 

                They give him jungle tactical gear, and grease his face with dark green and black paint; he’s shoved into a helicopter with some marines who were told he was some kind of specialist.  Classified, they just smiled at that and chuckled, “Oh, you’re one of _those_.”  The pilot cranks up the radio, enjoying the sounds of CCR before they got out of range of the broadcast.  One marine offers the Soldier a crinkled cigarette, he takes it and lights it with practiced ease.  He doesn’t remember ever smoking before.

                “You must be some kind of crazy.”  A corporal says to him, eyes bright from lack of sleep.  The corporal is a handsome young black man.  It’s the sixties now people still cared about that sort of thing but right then among his fellow Marines in a foreign land, mortar rounds punctuating the lyrics of Fortunate Son, the color of a man’s skin meant less than nothing.  They all bled red.

                The Soldier grins, comfortable in his environment and sure of his cover story, “I am.”  No handlers were looking over his shoulder here, he shouldn’t feel relieved by that.  He does.

                “Where you from?”  A different marine asks, his dogtags dangle over his fatigues, the Soldier can make out the name Adams.

                “Brooklyn.”  The Soldier doesn’t know why he says that, it wasn’t a part of the cover it was just the first thing that came out of his mouth.

                “Yeah!?  Hey, I got a girl back that way!  Marie, red head.”

                The corporal scoffs, “What, you expect everybody from New York to know each other, Private?”

                A different voice starts chuckling, “Everyone in New York probably _knows_ his girl!”

                That makes the whole chopper erupt in laughter, the corporal should rightfully be a little pissed but he laughs right along with them at his own expense.  The music and the laughter are cut short by the pilot’s frantic yelling.  The chopper is hit, they scream for them to hold on.  Beneath the Soldier’s hands he could feel the rotaries stop despite the rattling of the hull.  They’re going down, _down_ , the pilots can’t stop it.  The Soldier couldn’t stop it even if he tried.  The chopper crashes in a ridge line between a river and a stark incline of hills covered in thick trees.

                For an eternity it feels like the Soldier can’t breathe.  Weight is crushing his ribs, his bones are healing as fast as they’re splintering but he has to move or else risk getting pinned down permanently.  The bodies of the men around him make the heat suffocating.  It’s a drowning sort of heat, wet and collecting in corners.  He drags his rifle out with him.  His collar bone was broken along with a couple of fingers on his right hand.  The Soldier pops the fingers back in place absently focused on the struggled breathing of the copilot.  The Soldier checks to see if the radio was still functional and in doing so he finds the copilot’s lower half is being held in place by the forced-in steering controls.  If he was moved he would just fall apart, it would be sloppy, painful.  The copilot’s eyes flutter open the same time the Soldier presses his side arm into the man’s head and fires. 

                It was a mercy.  He should have just walked away.  Waste of a bullet, a cold voice inside him seethes.  The Soldier can hear the enemy Viet Cong in the hills rising over the water.  They don’t stand a chance.  His orders were to terminate this sector of all life.  Down the river a farmer crosses a low bridge a woman the same age clung to his side stares at the downed helicopter.  The Soldier raises his weapon and kills them with one shot to make up for the wasted bullet on the copilot.

                When Bucky began to remember Vietnam he became aware of what his purpose was, at the time it made no sense.  They would send him and take out swaths of Viet Cong then every now and then they gave him some American names and he was to make sure they were KIA.  It was all to make the suffering worse, so that when Nixon pulled the troops out, ended the draft, he was hailed a hero by the American media.  To the soldiers that fought and died for every meter it felt like a betrayal.

                Bucky, maybe not Bucky not all the way but he wasn’t all the way the Winter Soldier either, began to notice that betrayal on every street of every city he ended up in.  The veterans of forgotten wars littered the sidewalks and back-alleys.   Many of them aged from the Vietnam War or maybe Korea.  Others whose younger skin and eyes that bore easily into the sun heralded from the Middle East’s myriad of conflicts.  They wear their jackets, they clutch their cups, and they stare into the cracks of the ground.  Not hollow or invisible but were treated that way all the same.  Like Bucky had been treated.

                Bucky’s been running a long time, that day harder and faster than others.  He slides down a brick wall out of the way of fast-moving pedestrians about ten feet away from a man also sitting on the ground with his back to the wall.  A cap emblazoned with “Veteran of the Vietnam War” on it with an army crest etched above the letters sits on his head, which coupled with the short scraggly white beard hides the man’s face.  His jacket has medals pinned to it, shiny like someone else put them there.  Maybe he was the reason Bucky chose to stop and breathe here.

                Eventually the man notices him and looks over.  His sharp eyes linger on Bucky’s exposed metal hand and asks gruffly after a long stretch, “Where’d you serve, kid?”

                Bucky laughs, or he thinks he’s does, its hard sometimes to tell, “Hell.”  He answers as honest as he can, “I served in hell.”

                The man nods, he understands more than he’ like to and asks nothing else of the Soldier.

                No, Bucky Barnes. 

He was Bucky Barnes.  A soldier, not the Soldier.

                The sky is blue above them.  Bucky stares into that blue for hours until it becomes contained in a pair of eyes and a voice that seeps into his skin but is still hushed and reverent, “Bucky?”

                Oh, good, Bucky thinks a little sardonic.  He’d been wondering when the winged one would tell Steve where he was. 

He was so fucking tired of running.

 

**_“And When he gets to heaven,_ **

**_To Saint Peter he will tell;_ **

**_One more Soldier reporting, sir._ **

**_I’ve served my time in Hell!”_ **

_\--PFC. James A. Donahue, USMC._

_Ist Marine Division, H Company,_

_2 nd. Battalion, 1st Regiment_

 


End file.
